It was great to be a part of Mobile Dating Boot Camp! I had a lot of fun. Uber was incredibly generous to give us all free round trips and their service was amazing. As soon as I arrived at the SLS hotel, I felt like I was a celebrity. When I exited my car, driven by Dixie I was interviewed. I then got to meet the other 3 panelists, Scott, Jamie and Stephen, who were all so much fun.

We, together with Julie Spira, grabbed our complimentary lunch provided by the hotel and then we proceeded to do our on camera interviews. After that it was panel time. Everyone there was so fascinated by us…I felt like we were candy for them and that they really valued our opinions. After all of the questions they asked, the panel ended and we were them swarmed by a few new app developers who wanted to show us their prototypes and hear what we thought. There’s nothing I love more than giving my opinion, especially when I’m asked to do so, so I had a blast. I’d definitely do another panel.

]]>http://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/christines-day-at-idate/feed/0Christine’s Date Update – OkCupid and Tinderhttp://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/christines-date-update-okcupid-and-tinder/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=christines-date-update-okcupid-and-tinder
http://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/christines-date-update-okcupid-and-tinder/#commentsThu, 06 Jun 2013 12:00:17 +0000Juliehttp://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/?p=662Hi! It’s Christine with my last blog before I head over to the Mobile Dating Conference.

Here’s my date update for OkCupid and Tinder.

OK Cupid: RE: notifications, I don’t need an email every time someone “chose me!” or when someone is “checking me out right now!” That does nothing for me, especially since those are the guys who never bother to message me. I’m starting to view those msgs as spam, which an app never wants.

As for the guys, I’ve been visited by 30 guys since June 2nd and have gotten 13 new messages in the past week from different guys (most of them are rated 27%-47% compatible with me…)

I have been messaging three. One is the same guy as last week (the one I wasn’t really into) and it looks like he’s just looking for a pen pal anyway. Another I reached out to…he answered my questions but didn’t ask me anything in return, which seems to be a frustrating trend on OKC. Why respond to someone if you don’t want to know anything about them? Or are they just so socially awkward that they don’t realize that’s the polite thing to do? And the third guy has only asked me about acting advice, which is annoying. My OKC does not say “looking for friends.”

I have no desire to ever try the Crazy Blind Date portion of the app. Based on the guys who have been looking at my profile and the kinds of inane or downright sexual advances I’ve received in initial messages, I don’t want to deal with that amplified in person where I can’t delete the message and move on to the next guy who could have more potential.

Tinder: Not sure I mentioned the first ever messaging encounter I had with a guy on this app. If not, here’s the gist…it’s pretty amusing.

Jay* (I’ve changed his name) greeted me and asked me what I was up to. He then proceeded to invite me to “stop by his office.” When I declined that he said “then should I come to your place? If you comf.”

I was unfamiliar with what the abbrev “comf” stood for so my friend and I googled it…I’ll let you do that on your own.

I called him out on it and he tried to backpedal saying he meant “comfortable.” I didn’t respond.

Well, two days ago (2 weeks after the “comf encounter”) he messaged me again. Guess he couldn’t take my last three hints!

As for the app itself, I really like all of the changes they’ve implemented with the newest update. You can now choose your desired age range (no more 20 years olds or 50 year olds!) AND distance (no more dudes in the OC or Calabasas!)

We’re just one day away from meeting everyone at the Mobile Dating Conference in Beverly Hills and Ithought I’d share my thoughts on eHarmony’s mobile dating app.

I’m still messaging with the same three guys. It’s getting to novel length! At least that’s now it looks like on my cell phone. I’ve also sent a few multiple choice (mcs) things to other guys but haven’t gotten any responses. No new guys have sent me mcs either. Actually, funny coincidence, one of the guys JUST messaged me and has asked me out towards the end of the week. I’m very excited to actually meet someone in person!

The app itself is fairly easy though I wish there was an easier way to handle notifications. I don’t want a notification every time a guy looks at my profile and THEN sends me the mc thing. That’s already 2 notifications for a guy I’m potentially not interested in. But on the flip side, I would like to know when someone has sent me a message that I’m already in contact with. There should be an easier way to filter. I also haven’t been able to figure out how to “hide” the matches I’m not interested in, so I have a really long list and it’s hard to scroll to the ones I could possibly like. I know there’s a way to do it….

Tomorrow, I’ll share my thoughts on OkCupid and Tinder before getting into my Uber limo ride to the SLS Hotel for the iDate/Mobile Dating Conference.

I’m using Tinder and OkCupid mobile dating apps. Here’s my take so far:

Tinder

I love the simplicity of the Tinder app! Its the opposite of your normal dating site. No self summaries. No questions. No personality profiles. Just a couple of photos and instinct. Sometimes its stressful to sort through profiles and read and analyze them and then craft careful messages. There’s something very appealing about just saying yes I’m attracted to this person or no I’m not and then moving on. Low effort requirements are appreciated. Every time I’ve got some downtime or 5 minutes to kill, I’ve been hopping on and just “swiping” girls. It’s nice because you lay a big foundation of “yes’s” and then matches just start to trickle in. Its kinda like a fun game. The downside is very little seems to materialize from the matches. I went on one date which was fun but nothing special. However, most of the conversations seems to die after only a few exchanges of instant messages. All the rating portion of the App is great, I find the messaging function to be clunky and it makes me want to switch to text with the girls ASAP.

OkCupid

There are so many people on OKC, it can be a lot of fun to go through their profiles and even more so their questions/answers. It’s a little voyeuristic. I also enjoyed answer the questions and finally called it quits around 200 and something. However, I really believe their system makes a lot of sense. Their personality assessment of me is extremely accurate and I have found a high degree of interest in many of my matches with high a Match % (>90%). I like that most of the site is free and all the different features it has. I’m particularly interested in trying some of these local meet ups or blind dates. I’m always interested in an adventure/story and these local meet ups seem like a fun way to get out of the house and meet someone interesting – regardless of match potential. I also have been exchanging messages with one girl who is a 96% match with me that I’m very excited about! So we’ll see how that goes….

I’m looking forward to the Mobile Dating Conference and to sharing my experiences.

They updated the How About We app for iPhone, and since the upgrade, the app constantly fails upon entering the message inbox. Other than that I find that posting a witty idea increases the likelihood of a response.

The common flaw of on-line dating: I nabbed a couple dates off OK Cupid and How About We over the past weekend, however none of the dates matched any of their photos, as they were either old or obscure.

I worked with Julie Spira who critiqued my profile to enhance my chances of meeting someone. I wondered if I had the right photos posted and if my description was too long/short? Julie helped me increase my dating probability by widening my age range, changed my primary photo which included a blurry photo of me and with two other women, which she said was a huge turn-off to women. We also included a bit more information on my profile.

Since the changes, I have locked down two dates already this week. Overall both applications were also helpful. I recommend OkCupid for those interested in a casual way of meeting people. I recommend How About We for the more serious daters.

I’m using Tinder, with very little response rate. Glad they added in the age filters since my last update. The matchmaker feature is interesting, although I don’t really see myself using it. The app really is tailored for good looking people as there’s very little content on there and it’s people’s best pics (5 max). Most the pics tend to be pretty artsy or with multiple friends, so you can get a good look at the person. And the minimal effort required to join means minimal interest in keeping up with it. Even when I did connect with a few people, they never responded again.

On Let’s Date, I’m just not a fan of the quality of the people on there. The only distance filter is region, e.g. Los Angeles. But includes all of the surrounding areas, which isn’t particularly useful. I don’t want to date someone in the OC or deep in the valley. As much as I x-out the things I don’t like, it doesn’t seem to matter because I keep getting similar people. I assume it’s because they have a limited user base, so they’re forced to suggest people that don’t fit your criteria. After 1+ month of using regularly, still not mutual interest thus far.

I’ve gotten 16 new OK Cupid messages. I’ve responded to one, mostly because I felt bad that I’m not attracted to any of the guys messaging me. And one message from a good friend of mine who got matched to me. We had a good laugh.

I’ve had 19 matches on Tinder and four have messaged me. Mostly “How do you know Mutual Friend #1″ or just the generic “Hi, I’m Guy’s Name.” to which I respond and then nothing. It’s still really fun though!

Eharmony has been good. It requires a lot more effort than OKC and Tinder so once the guys end up messaging you, they’re writing small novels. I’ve made it to “eharmony mail” with three guys, all of whom seem nice, who are interesting and are not just trying to get in my pants. None have asked to meet in person yet, but I guess it’s still early.

So Tinder was fun, for about a half hour, at which point I realized that I’ve scrolled through a few hundred women and Liked maybe 80%, without any chat results. Then it occurred to me that a lot of these women haven’t logged onto the site in weeks. And if they do come back, they’ll have to scroll through probably hundreds of pics of guys before they get a chance to Like me back, generating a chat request. Fun idea, but without more real, active women using the site, it’s kind of pointless.

POF looked good on my Samsung Galaxy S3 with its vertical scroll and all, but shortly after using it I realized the last thing I want to do is be typing out messages on my phone. It became somewhat more tolerable when I paired my bluetooth keyboard to the phone, but at that point I have to ask myself — why am I using a mobile app instead of the desktop? As far as the experience goes, POF is significantly better for actually meeting people in my opinion. People don’t need to mutually Like each other to communicate, so all a girl has to do is sift through about 200 messages from horny old men and eventually she’ll see yours!

]]>http://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/romys-date-update/feed/0Jaime’s Date Updatehttp://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/jaimes-date-update/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jaimes-date-update
http://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/jaimes-date-update/#commentsTue, 04 Jun 2013 21:46:05 +0000Juliehttp://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/?p=625I have been using the mobile apps for Match.com and Tinder. Tinder is actually pretty fun, almost like a game. You just drag a person to the plus or minus side if you like them or not. It also shows if you have mutual friends on Facebook, which is cool. One thing about Tinder is that there are a lot of really young people on this site, so you have to sort through a lot of people if you don’t want to date twenty year olds! I chatted with a few people and ended up meeting up for coffee with one guy. He was 37, I think and we actually had one mutual friend on facebook. Our first date went pretty well and I ended up meeting him for dinner later in the week. We had fun but I ended up feeling that we just didn’t have a lot in common so we parted ways.

On Match I have been on several dates, some good and some not great of course. I haven’t actually had any horrible experiences so that is good. Most of the people I have gone out with are very nice but there just may not be an attraction there. I did meet one guy for happy hour and it went well. I was attracted to him, we had a lot in common and ended up going on a few more dates. Recently I found out some things through facebook and instagram that just lead me to believe he isn’t really looking for a long term relationship so I have stopped seeing him.

]]>http://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/jaimes-date-update/feed/0Christine’s Journeyhttp://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/christines-journey/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=christines-journey
http://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/christines-journey/#commentsTue, 21 May 2013 20:41:42 +0000Juliehttp://mobiledatingbootcamp.com/?p=608Since I created a new OKC account, I’ve been visited by 30 people and have received ten messages…not a bad ratio for online dating! Only issue is I’m not attracted to a single one of them.

I got a delightful message from another 50+ year old man:

“I offer romance, respect, and never ending friendship. I have deep experience in many explorations that may interest you. I have lived in Europe and Asia as well as North America. I have virtually explored Mars with a camera I built that landed there. I have invented technology that has touched your life. You intrigue me. I hope you will find my combination of attributes attractive. Please let us meet in person so my passion for life can elevate our conversation to a captivating level!”

I downloaded Tinder for the fun of it. It’s like boyfriend shopping!! And you can easily play around it with with your friends while you’re waiting for drinks or food while out. Granted, a lot of the guys are just looking for a quick hook up, but I’ve had a few fun conversations…that led nowhere. It’s also a great ego boost. I’ve had 27 matches since signing up on Friday afternoon, four of whom have sent me a message. I wish that ratio were higher, but to be fair, I’m not taking the initiative either. I think part of that is because I like to be pursued, even just a little bit. If he already knows I think he’s attractive, why not reach out to me? One thing I also really like about Tinder is that only mutual matches can send you a message. That’s a lot of saved “wasted” time.

As for eharmony, I got 25 multiple choice emails from guys. I’ve responded to 4 and last night reached out to three more of my matches (2 have already replied.) It’s all multiple choice, which is weird, but I’m seeing where it goes. At least it requires effort so I’m assuming the guys are looking for something more and a “buddy.”